


Cry Like This

by GenitalGrievous



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Angst, Boxing, Coping Mechanisms, Grief, Healing, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-09
Updated: 2014-05-09
Packaged: 2018-01-24 03:55:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,599
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1590749
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GenitalGrievous/pseuds/GenitalGrievous
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"You can't cry like this, Daniel, all by yourself."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cry Like This

**Author's Note:**

> This is barely slash, I think it could have easily qualified as Gen, but in my head I kind of pictured it almost as a prequel to "Not Time To Go Yet," so I guess that would make it pre-slash.

Under Daniel's desk it was slightly darker than the rest of his office. He had dimmed the lights as he came back to his office from their debriefing and slid in the small square space underneath, clutching his wife's photograph to his chest. It had been several months since Sha're's death, but each mission was salt on his fresh wound, knowing that no matter how many more missions he went on with SG-1 his wife was lost to him forever. The nervous tension that going offworld had previously held, _will I see Sha're, can we free her this time_ had evaporated leaving behind a tense residue. A place that he once occupied with hope had been emptied inside him and remained devoid of new emotion. He clutched the framed portrait of Sha're on either side, his hands shaking with each hiccuping sob that ripped from his throat.  
  
When Daniel's parents had died and he was unceremoniously ushered into the foster system he convinced himself he could never possibly grieve more than that time, no pain could possibly be as great as the pain every single day after his parent's death had brought him. Until Sha're. Until knowing that one of his best friends had killed the love of his life, until he had to convince himself that the most important person in his world had needed to die at that moment. That her death was somehow _right_. He tried to remember the way her soft skin had felt under his fingers, laying beside her and stroking her cheek on the cold ground under the tent, feeling her body gradually grow cold beside him until even the staff burn in her chest had stopped emitting a small wisp of smoke in the crisp air. He thought of her eyes, not on that horrible world, but on Abydos, sparkling in the firelight while the village gathered to tell stories on warm clear nights. The way her white teeth reflected the orange glow each time she laughed. Her tiny tan hand wrapping around Daniel's insistently, twining fingers with him while Skaara told a story to the group.  
  
At Stargate Command Daniel had begun to flit between hiding spots, always struggling to ensure that no one would find him crying, that no one would try to comfort him with meaningless platitudes or worse try to send him to see Doctor Mackenzie. He had sat with Teal'c and practiced something like Kel-no-reem, sat with Sam and listened to her awkward attempts at comfort, and had finally decided that he didn't like trying to talk with _anyone_ about "what he was going through." He erected a wall around his emotions when other people were present, developed a distinct vibe of recovery and reconciliation and tried to make everyone at the base move on. But he was far from having pulled himself together and on bad days barely made it to his office or a supply closet or restroom before breaking down. Today he had made three paces into his dim office before it had begun. Under the desk, with his knees drawn up to his chin, Daniel felt safe. He had been able to cry longer and harder than he usually allowed himself and he could feel a migraine blossoming under his left eyebrow as his reddened eyes dried.  
  
"Daniel?" He heard the soft creak of his office door accompanied by brisk footsteps. "Siler saw you come in here."  
  
Jack was too damn stubborn, Daniel silently cursed. He held completely still and controlled his breathing, hoping that Jack would give up and assumed that Siler had been mistaken. He closed his eyes, remembering the comfort of hiding as a child with his eyes shut, imagining that if he could not see the world then no one could see him either.  
  
"Daniel?" Jack's voice was significantly closer. "What the hell?"  
  
Daniel felt Jack's had gently rest on his shoulder. He opened his eyes and looked to his left, meeting Jack's dark brown eyes, his brow knit with--pity? No, something else. Empathy. Daniel swallowed, his throat dry after crying for so long.  
  
"This isn't the way to do it, Daniel." Jack said after a moment of silence, his voice low and thick, like he had been smoking.  
  
"I don't want to talk about it anymore." Daniel looked away from Jack, his eyes stung sharply as the tears started forming again. "With _anyone_."  
  
"You don't need to." Jack's expressions were impassive, unreadable to Daniel.  
  
Hugging his legs to his body, Daniel buried his face in his knees. "Then what do you want?"  
  
"You can't cry like this, Daniel, all by yourself."  
  
"It's been working just fine for me."  
  
"For now." Jack silenced Daniel as he lifted his head from his knees to begin a clumsy retort. "Daniel. I _know_. Don't make me remind you."  
  
Daniel rapped his chin sharply on the back of his hands resting atop his knees and focused on a dark brown knot in the wood of his desk ahead of him, blocking Jack out of his periphery by force of will.  
"Danny." Jack reached out and gripped him around the bicep, tightening his hand and tugging lightly. "Come out of here."  
  
"No." Daniel tugged his arm back towards himself sharply, shifting so that his right side was pressed against the back of the well under his desk.  
  
Tugging again, Jack's eyebrows knotted. "Danny."  
  
"No, Jack!" Daniel's voice raised involuntarily. "I'm _goddamn_ sick and tired of people trying to drag me to Doctor MacKenzie!" He spun his head around to meet Jack's eyes, and felt a stab of guilt when he saw nothing but pain written across his face.  
  
"I wouldn't try to drag you there, Danny. Not to that quack." His voice was barely above a whisper, like he was trying to draw a frightened animal to eat from his hand. "I want to help you. _Me._ "  
  
Guilt wound its way around Daniel's brain, guilt for not trusting his friends, guilt for resenting their attempts to help him, and a particularly self-loathing guilt for not even considering that Jack's unique experiences might make him more eligible than others to offer Daniel assistance in overcoming this particular hurdle in his life. Of course Jack would at least want to try, even if his own brand of coping mechanisms might not actually aid Daniel, he had felt this grief before, or one very similar. It hadn't been selfish of Daniel to seclude himself from his closest friends, but it had been damn near it.  
  
Eyes shifting back and forth, almost expecting someone else to jump out from behind Jack, Daniel nodded. "Okay." He responded in a gentle voice to match Jack's, "Try me."  
  
Jack smiled grimly, his face a mix of different discomforts, as though the act of trying to console a friend was ultimately foreign to him, but that he was meeting the challenge head-on with very "Jackish" sensibilities. Daniel sympathized with him. He hated comforting people with shared negative experiences, hated the feeling of dredging up his own past when he put so much work into burying personal memories beneath ages worth of knowledge and education. Taking the open hand that Jack offered him, Daniel used Jack's strength to straighten his sore legs and stand up, feeling his back refuse to straighten entirely after spending so long curled under the desk.  
  
Reluctantly Jack let go of Daniel's hand when he was fully standing, resting his eyes on his hand for a moment before making hesitant eye contact with Daniel. "Come on." He jerked his head towards the door.  
Daniel let Jack walk all the way to the door before he started moved forward slowly, following Jack a few feet behind down the hallways of the SGC. He made several turns, each time glancing back to make sure that Daniel was still following him, and nodding slightly when their eyes met. At the end of their meandering walk Daniel found himself at the gym. It was late, past five o' clock on a Friday night, and the gym was empty, weights neatly stacked on racks and various pieces of equipment and machinery looking almost forlorn without the usual noise and chatter of people working out. Surveying the whole gym, Daniel shrugged, looking at Jack. He had never been one for physical exercise in a gym, it had always seemed tedious to him, though he tried to come down around once a week and work on the weights. Just because he was a civilian didn't mean he could totally neglect his physical fitness.  
  
Stepping forward hesitantly, Daniel followed Jack as he passed all of the equipment to a side room that contained a small boxing ring and several punching bags, as well as all of the necessary accoutrements lined up on shelfs and in cubbies along the wall. "Suit up." Jack said simply, indicating the wall of boxing gloves and protective gear with a quick tilt of his head.  
The brown gloves Daniel picked from a pile were well worn, but they fit well on his hands, neither to large nor too small. Flexing his hands, he glanced over at Jack and saw that he was already wearing headgear and a mouthguard, his gloves tucked between an elbow and his ribs. Daniel looked at the rack of headgear uncertainly, gloves were self-explanatory but he had no idea how to pick one of the strange padded crowns that Jack was wearing. Before he could broach the subject, however, Jack approached him briskly, grabbing a piece of headgear seemingly at random from a shelf and gently fitting in onto Daniel's head, slipping his glasses off with one hand as he pulled the headgear down with the other.  
  
"I don't have an extra mouthguard." Jack said from around his, his voice distorted by the piece of rubber, "But you won't need it."  
  
Standing in front of Jack feeling more than a little awkward, Daniel worried that he wasn't wearing gym clothes, he was wearing his usual chinos and a grey fleece pullover. Habitually he flexed his hands again in his gloves, fidgeting to distract himself.  
  
"In here." Grim-faced, Jack held up the top rope so Daniel could climb into the boxing ring. He followed Daniel in, standing squared up a few feet away from him.  
  
"What do I--?" Daniel worried his lip gently with his teeth.  
  
"Hit me." Jack nodded, indicating a spot just left of his chin with his own glove.  
  
"Jack." Daniel admonished.  
  
"Come on. Trust me."  
  
"I don't know how to box."  
  
"I'm not asking you to."  
  
Reluctantly, Daniel approached Jack and swung at his chin, missing by a hairsbreadth as Jack ducked backwards out of the way. Daniel grunted, frustrated by the lack of payoff, and swung with his left hand towards the side of Jack's head, disappointed when his blow cleared through a full arc as Jack jumped to the right. "Hey." Daniel groaned, holding his fists over his face at ready, "I thought--"  
"Come on," Jack repeated, gesturing the phrase with his hands.  
  
Feeling warmth spread across his chest, Daniel swung with his right, connecting with Jack's head with his left fist as Jack dodged from the first blow. "Good!" Jack yelled, his voice a little strained with surprise. Satisfied, Daniel stepped back. "Keep going," Jack flitted back and forth on the balls of his feet.  
  
Swing to Jack's left side, miss. Swing to the right, miss. Huffing with exertion, Daniel stepped back and watched Jack, studying his movements as though he were an archeological subject. He rubbed his gloves together, not bringing them far from his head. After studying Jack's back and forth fleetfootedness for a few moments Daniel dodged forward ducking and came up from beneath Jack's head to hit him squarely in the jaw. Jack staggered backwards and Daniel felt a mixture of glory and guilt until he spotted the colonel grinning ear to ear. "Fuck Daniel!" Jack yelled, smudging a small amount of blood from his lips, "That's one helluva swing."  
  
Giggling, Daniel stepped forward. "You okay?"  
  
"Great." Jack chuckled. "Better than great. Keep going."  
  
Shrugging, Daniel fell into a quick stepping rhythm, left, right, up, right, up, left, up, right, left, missing every time as Jack dodged from side to side, backwards, and down, neatly avoiding every swing that Daniel managed. "Come on, you're slacking." Jack said between gasps, his salt and pepper hair pasted to his forehead with sweat.  
  
"I can't!" Daniel managed, his arms sore from the biceps to his fingertips.  
  
"Picture Teal'c." Jack offered, and Daniel felt a quick needling guilt that bringing up his friend's name made him want to punch Jack, punch him hard, make it hurt. He swung hard at Jack's face, feeling his shoulder pull as Jack dodged and the momentum of the movement forced him to finish a complete arc. Taking a deep breath, Daniel swung from the bottom again, but Jack dodged. He swung from the left, Jack dodged again.  
  
"Picture MacKenzie." Jack said, squaring up and stumbling backwards when a particularly hard punch hit home on the side of his head. "Good," Jack dodged a few more hits, each one more haphazardly powerful than the last. "Now picture Apophis." It was as though a dark cloud had passed over Daniel's face at Jack's words, his expression changing from one of the fairly mild irritation he held for Doctor MacKenzie to a deeper hatred. His swings had more force behind them, but they were more irregular and erratic. Easier to dodge, but harder to predict, as though the connection from Daniel's brain to his fists had been neatly severed. He swung in tight arcs, back and forth, with no visible tells on his face to cue Jack in on where to dodge. When one of the arcs finally ended at his face Jack crumpled, even his headgear couldn't fully lessen the potency of the hit.  
  
Dropping his hands to his sides, Daniel watched quietly as Jack sat up, rubbing the side of his head gingerly with one of his gloves. They made tentative eye contact, and Jack smiled warmly when he saw the tears that had blended with the sweat on Daniel's reddened face. "There." Jack said quietly, spitting his mouthguard into one of his gloves. "Like that."  
  
Daniel's eyebrows scrunched together, his eyes still overflowing with unshed tears. "Like what?" He whispered, barely audible from his constricted throat.  
  
"Don't cry by yourself, don't hide away." Jack pulled his gloves off to punctuate his sentence. "When you have to cry, cry like this. Cry until your anger melts away."  
  
More tears ran down Daniel's face as he closed his eyes tightly, his mouth screwed up with emotion. His voice refused to come back.  
  
"You're so mad, you'll never stop grieving if you don't cry the anger away first. Then you can grieve. Then you can heal." Jack smiled up at Daniel, tears glittering in his own eyes. He had been so angry when Charlie died, angry at himself, angry at Sarah, angry at the USAF, angry at the world, that his rage had buried his grief to the point that he mistook one for the other. It had been a guess, but it was right on target that Daniel was experiencing the same kind of agony. He had been forced to discover it on his own, to heal by himself, and he didn't want Daniel to go through the years that would take, to feel that kind of emptiness. "When you feel like that, come get me. Never cry alone again, Danny. Get me, and cry like this."


End file.
